What Does Atiku Bring to a Presidential Ticket that Many other PDP Members do not or Cannot?

Atiku Abubakar

Now that Nigeria’s former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has decamped from the All Progressives Congress (APC), we can expect both the adulation and castigation to begin.  Atiku is no stranger to modern Nigerian politics. Atiku was, after all, the Northern face of the Obasanjo presidency, which (at least in Obasanjo’s first term) was well known to be a Southern presidency with a Northern Heart.  Atiku’s shouts of Biafra! Biafra!! at the late former Vice President, Alex Ekwueme, was icing on the cake that was Obasanjo’s victory over Ekwueme at the 1998 People’s Democratic Party (PDP) convention in Jos where Atiku led Ekwueme’s adversaries to humiliate the former Vice president who was the leading candidate and instead delivered the PDP ticket to Obasanjo.  The Biafra! chorus was nothing merely a confirmation of reports that the North had concluded, prior to the convention, that while the presidency would go to the South, it would not go to an Igbo, and certainly not to one that fought the Nigeria-Biafra War on the Biafran side. Now, suspicion is rife that Atiku will join PDP and challenge President Muhammadu Buhari should the latter decide to contest the 2019 election for president.  So, what does Atiku bring to a presidential ticket that many others in PDP do not, or cannot?